Winds of Change at BBC?

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the BBC has appointed a “Middle East policeman” to oversee its coverage of the region amid mounting allegations of anti-Israeli bias.

The BBC denied that the appointment amounted to an admission that it had “got its coverage wrong” but conceded the corporation was sensitive to criticism.

A very positive sign, and a real victory for media monitors of the BBC. This, on the heels of the BBC’s uncharacteristically honest report Friday on PA financing of terrorism.

Both the report and the decision to appoint the “senior editorial adviser” on Mideast coverage should be commended.

Send your comments to: newsonline@bbc.co.uk

UPDATE: Some HonestReporting subscribers have written us that we shouldn’t be commending the Beeb for these developments. Why? Click on “Continue” below.

Either the BBC’s general tone hasn’t changed:

The BBC may have ameliorated its bias, but when it recently
reported… that some huge percentage of people in the
UK viewed Israel as the single greatest threat to world peace, Judy
Swallow, the host was audibly gleeful. She is in my view one of the
worst of the BBC people. Unfortunately she also had Abe Foxman
on the same show and regrettably he was not up to contending with
Swallow or her other guest, some raving UK “intellectual” whose
hatred of Israel was palpable. I’ll withhold my commendations. – D.L., Boston

Or we really should be “going for BBC’s jugular”:

Your interesting article “Winds of change at the BBC?”, misses the point.
The BBC is not a government institution. It is an independent organization is is funded by about USD 4 billion / year by the UK government.

In 2006 its concession, meaning its right to exist, and its budget will be decided on.

Right now the battle is starting, with many wishing for the BBC to be denied a new concession at all, or to at least have its budget cut in half.

This cosmetic change at the BBC is related to heat they are taking on fabricated, distorted reporting of the last 3 years.

Once the concession is granted, it will be business as usual.

HonestReporting should be piling on the pressure. Submitting everything it has to the appropriate UK government body, to be sure that the BBC is destroyed and never rises again.

They have already poisoned the minds of hundred of millions of Arabs and Europeans against Israel and the Jewish People. Nothing can change that or those minds.

Keep the pressure up, and if you really want to influence the news so that it is fair and balanced, then go for the throat of the BBC, and do all in your power to be sure it is denied a new concession in 2006.

You need to start acting now.

In any case, the more pressure on them, the more honest they will become.

No change at all. The BBC is still up to its old dirty tricks. The “Correspondent” program I saw last night on BBC World harped pathetically on the “victimization” of the Palestinian people by “aggressive” Israeli military policies. They showed the ubiquitous Israeli tank moving into a Palestinian town at the start of Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002 with no mention whatsoever of what actually caused that operation: the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians, many of them elderly, some of whom were Holocaust survivors, in a suicide bomb attack at the Passover holiday dinner (seder) at the Park Hotel in Netanya. This disgusting, irresponsible BBC report showed absolutely no moral compunction at twisting reality to suit its biased political view.
No. It’s the same, old BBC.